CoStar Group, the parent company of Apartments.com, and Homes.com, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Zillow on July 30, alleging unauthorized use of tens of thousands of proprietary photographs.
Pending legal action
The lawsuit centers on images originally published on Apartments.com, taken by CoStar’s in-house team of more than 300 professional photographers. According to the suit, all images are registered with the United States Copyright Office (USCO), which provides legal protection for intellectual property and is a key authority in enforcing copyright claims.
CoStar’s complaint includes 46,979 pages of discovery and asserts that Zillow used these copyrighted images without permission to duplicate listings from Apartments.com on its own platform. CoStar further alleges that Zillow’s use of the images violates copyright law, particularly because Zillow profits from the listings.
Marketplace vs. fair use
At the heart of the case is the issue of fair use, a legal doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted content without permission in certain contexts, such as education, commentary or criticism. CoStar argues that Zillow’s business model disqualifies it from claiming this protection.
Zillow, originally an MLS-style portal for property listings, has evolved into a full-fledged marketplace. That shift, CoStar claims, makes its use of copyrighted content more commercial than editorial, thereby weakening any fair use defense.
According to the case, CoStar claims Zillow allows landlords to “claim” or take over listings once they’re duplicated on Zillow’s site, giving the platform a further incentive to pull in content without permission.
Zillow faces multiple legal battles
The is not Zillow’s only recent legal challenge. The company is also facing a lawsuit from real estate brokerage Compass. Compass alleges that Zillow unfairly penalized listings that appear first on other platforms, particularly Compass’s own semi-private network, by banning tem from Zillow’s MLS if they weren’t exclusive for at least one day.
Compass CEO Robert Refkin compared Zillow’s behavior to Amazon banning sellers for offering a product on their own site first. “That’s what Zillow is doing in real estate,” he said.
Implications for the industry
As Zillow and similar platforms replace traditional brokerages, they’re expected to take on more of the responsibilities those brokerages once handled, including content creation like photography.
But hiring photographers or licensing high-quality images at scale is expensive, and Zillow lacks the infrastructure to produce original listing photos for the millions of properties on its site. That responsibility would likely fall to the agents and property managers using the platform, requiring them to both provide their own images and grant Zillow the necessary usage rights.
The case signals a broader shift in the housing industry, as digital platforms increasingly contend with the legal and logistical burdens that come with replacing legacy systems.
